Thursday, 27 May 2010

Ronaldo and M's kind gift of a pair of cow pajamas (which we have since learnt, thanks to a sharp-eyed salma reader, are actually dalmation pajamas, but because I like cows so very much, we're sticking with that) have done very good service. Although the pics below, of Johann and Tanya wearing them, are posed, don't think for a second that they just put on the jarmies for a photo-op - quite to the contrary, they both wore them very happily for hours on a recent Silly Evening.

Silly Evenings happen frequently in this valley (or in my house, anyway), and often start as Silly Afternoons (or even Silly Mornings). This latest one began when Johann arrived as I was about to have my morning shower (around 11.30am - well, that's still morning). 'I love those cow bums!' he said of my ample butt in my cow pajamas, and, after a couple of glasses of fortifying red, insisted I lend him my PJs for a while.

The following 12 or so hours are a bit blurry, but they involved quite a bit of coming and going, probably most interestingly the arrival of the British-Consul-in-Cape-Town, a delicious man with an equally delicious husband. They'd come out to the valley for a quiet country weekend, and had been given (probably ill-advisedly) my number to phone for advice on where to go and what to see. By the time they contacted me, a Silly Afternoon on my verandah was well underway, and I told them they'd best pop around and get input from the impromptu gathering of valley folk.

To their immense credit, they didn't turn a hair when they arrived to find a posse of people well into their cups, taking turns wearing a pair of cow pajamas, doing each other's hair, arguing fit to bust and occasionally going into fits of hysteria.

A bit later they went off for a meal at a local restaurant while Lukas created kitchen magic by whipping up a quick supper for the rest of us from the half-tin of smoked sardines and bottle of Thai sweet chilli sauce he found in my fridge.

And they won our everlasting admiration a few hours later when we discovered we'd run entirely out of red wine, and I SMSd them to ask them to hotfoot it straight back to my place and bring some wine with them - and they did! And because this request came late on a Saturday night, they'd had to employ spy tactics at the restaurant at which they'd gone to dine in order to smuggle out two (opened, as is the law) bottles of red. What astonishingly resourceful fellows they are!